A Century of Inventions

Abstract

PERUSAL of Sir Alfred Ewing's masterly review of “A Century of Inventions” (NATURE, June 16) brings to mind the singular accuracy with which Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) foretold some of them. The forecast lies buried in his poem, “The Botanic Garden, or the Lover of the Plants,” which incurred Canning's merciless parody, “The Loves of the Triangles,” and was pronounced by Byron to be “pompous rhyme.”